The Absurdity Of Moving

So far back into the archives of this blog are posts about my move to Boston, my move back from Boston for a summer internship, the move back to Boston again and then back to Fort Worth in the middle of the winter, Dan and I leaving Beantown when there was snow on the ground and the weather was mild once we got into Arkansas.

Today is the recounting of the most recent move, which was from South Fort Worth, near Benbrook, to what I guess would be called West Fort Worth, or about seven miles or so from downtown, just off I-30.

The NYT today ran an article about decorating a place on a shoestring budget that was cool, design-wise, but absurd, dollar-wise. In the story, this couple redid a flat for about $10,300, which made me break out the Only Partially Ironically Used Text Speak in my head. ORLY, NYT? Ten grand is a shoestring budget? Are you fucking kidding me?

Man, if I had that kind of money, I could just get it all in one dollar bills, buy a staple gun, and just wallpaper the apartment in MONEY. Then, when I needed a soda, I'd just pry one off the wall in a place no one would see it, like from behind the microwave in the kitchen.

The move itself wasn't too bad--I took a half day, borrowed the McGraw family truck, and loaded up most of my shit on my own, all Grapes of Wrath style, and drove it to the new place, where I started unpacking it all. Dan came by, helped me unload that, then his friend Jimmy came by. Dan took us all to dinner at a fairly generic by nearby Mexican place, The Original, and thanks to a catering miscount, I walked out with an extra free half of a roasted chicken. Sweet. Food.

Jimmy in his little Toyota accompanied Dan and I and the McGraw truck back to the old apartment, we wrangled up the rest of the stuff and Fenway, and then unloaded everything. I went to turn the AC on, went to buy ice (no ice maker, no ice trays, but really no big deal), and when we went to bed it was late and I couldn't really sleep. My cat took up residence under the bed, because the entire apartmend reeked of cat urine from the last owner--I mean, grody, gross, horrible smell, despite the new carpet. I ended up sleeping on the floor because I was so hot, I was so wound up, I was so sore and was sure my arms might fall off if I rolled over. The next day Dan and I walked across the street to get donuts at Dale's #9, the cable guy came, got that all hooked up, and as the temperature got warmer outside, we realized it wasn't cooling off inside. The AC was broken. The property manager said they couldn't get it fixed until Tuesday because it was Memorial Day weekend. Also said the smell would be addressed later. There was a lot of cursing. My parents told me to go to Wal-Mart and buy some fans with their credit card.

Sunday, it thunderstormed, the ceiling in the bedroom started leaking. Then I lost it and started crying for inexplicable reasons and freaking the fuck out of Dan. We tried scrubbing the kitchen to try to get rid of some of the smell.

Monday, it was fucking hot and I scrubbed walls, thinking maybe I could dent the smell. I stayed in the bedroom most of the day, though, with the fans on, the lights off, and the windows cracked enough to give light for me to read. Fenway moved from under the bed to hiding in the back of the closet. I always had a hunch he was one of teh geighs.

Tuesday, got the AC fixed and was finally able to sleep well for the first time since I moved in. Tuesday night, it thunderstormed again, and my trash can set up under the leak was filled up more.

It's been an eventful move, I guess. I love where my apartment is, I think it's cute and just the right size, but it smells bad and the ceiling leaks. I'm frustrated and smitten all at once, and I can't wait to get more art up on the walls (once I get paid) to help out with the design aspect, which is something I'm all obsessed about, even if I'm no good at it.

Yesterday I also turned in my keys to the old apartment, so I'm officially cut from that, thank goodness. Now I'm just hoping my ceiling doesn't cave in and I don't (God forbid) become used to the smell, because how gross would that be? It's so bad but you get used to it. But then, I guess the woman who lived there before me was used to it. I'm glad to know there's at least one person out there who's definitely crazier than I am.

Beer, Beans And Tuna

I find myself running out of names for blog posts, which is probably why it's a good thing I'm not a copywriter or an editor trying to come up with headlines. In a last-ditch effort to be original, I named this one after my dinner: Shiner 99 beer, tuna and white bean bruschetta.

On a side note, how long can bottled beer be stored before it goes skunky? I really liked last year's 99, so I bought five six-packs or so, but I rarely drink at home. I've been keeping them at the back of my closet, along with my skeletons and my sister's gay cat, and they're still good but now I'm afraid I need to drink them all within the next six months or they'll be gross.

Anyway. Today we finished a health care focus at the Big BP, and it was also Dan's first day at his new job. The health care issues, as anyone who listens to me bitch knows, are a pain in my ass, and today's was especially bad because I had this monster story that defied logic and didn't fit anywhere. All morning I was freaking starving, so I kept snacking, and then all afternoon I had a headache. I took three extra-strength Tylenol from my desk stash, I'm drinking beer now, and if it doesn't go away but the time I go to bed, I'll pilfer the leftover painkillers from old prescriptions. (I guess another question would be how long those prescriptions stay good. The last thing I need is to end up sick because I took funky Vicodin or something.)

Journalism continues to be a bitch. To distract myself, I'm checking out and reading a lot of fiction from the library and entertaining my fantasies of becoming an author, and I'm also hoarding measuring cups and kitchen towels, preparing for the move. (One week! Today I even arranged to have Charter come set up my internet the day after I move in, so I'm feeling proud of myself. Now, if I can only get electricity.)

I think things are ending on a relatively good note with my sister, too, which is nice. Our relationship has been all over the place since she graduated college and then threw all her ambitions to the wind, and yesterday we had a good, civil, friendly talk. It sounds like she'll be moving only about a quarter mile from where I'll be living, so that will be nice. I shouldn't keep tabs on her, but I kinda do. It's an older sister thing. I just feel like if I don't, no one else in the can, so she could drift away and there'd be nothing anyone else could do.

Hm. I'm realizing that I don't really have much to say today. Not that I ever have much to say--even when I'm on my soapbox, my rants probably don't matter to more than, say, five people on the planet at any given time. But that's cool. Beer makes me all talky, so I'm taking it out on the interwebs. Unfortunate. Next week, though, when I'm in the midst of moving, I'm sure I'll have plenty to write about. I've moved enough times to know that every move is a pain in the ass, even the little ones across town.

Cleo Shows Me The Future . . .

. . . and it's a future that holds a lot more griping about money. I wouldn't be a journalist if I weren't griping about my paycheck, right?

So no, I still don't have any faith in journalism. I love it, sure, but at the same time I don't trust it. It's what I imagine loving Godzilla is like. Or a serial killer. Whatever. The good news is Dan got pretty quickly picked up by a local news station, and he's just waiting on new equipment to get in before he starts that job. The bad news is my paper's parent company said everyone has to take another 5 unpaid days between now and the end of August. (For those keeping track, yes, we just finished taking 5 unpaid days. Now we get to start all over.)

This is why decent journalists leave the profession--because they can't pay their fucking rent.

That's my biggest concern. The past few weeks I've been getting things in line for a new one-bedroom apartment, and I signed the lease last week. It's fairly cheap, all things considered, but before I signed I talked to our publisher about whether we were getting full paychecks back. (Most of us opted to have one unpaid day per pay period, which lessens the financial blow, and also results in a 10% decrease per paycheck, which is just enough to be a pain in the ass and result in some imaginative money shuffling.)

Our publisher said he hadn't heard anything--this was a few weeks ago--and then today I was covering an event and a fellow reporter texted me about the announcement. I appreciate the text. It means I got to have a panic attack in my car driving back to work instead of at my desk.

It's going to be really tight to pay rent, pay bills, pay gas, pay student loans and eat. Reeeeaally tight. So tight it may be cheaper just to get an eating disorder, although I don't know if treatment is covered on our shitty health insurance. I'm desperately crossing my fingers one of the adjunct journalism teaching jobs I applied for comes through--being an adjunct doesn't pay much, but I think it would cover what I'll be not making through this furlough.

(Every journalist knows, a furlough is just a fancy way of doing a paycut. Fucking A.)

The event I was covering this morning was a job fair sort of deal, with staffing organizations and employers networking to get their clients all lined up. I should have been paying more attention, because I feel like the next step is layoffs.

Double fuck.

Journalism, you suck.

Fuck That Shit

I think Birnam may be right. What better to hold on to than anger and an easy three-word motto? It's easily repeated in journalism company, because we all curse way too much, and it's a convenient number of letters that would look good tattooed on anyone.

I'm still sort of reeling. It's very surreal. Dan's sister has been home through all this--she was stopping by Fort Worth before several months of backpacking through South America--and she left early this morning. Today is my last day of work for the week, so Dan and I will be able to hang out all weekend. Tonight a bunch of people who got laid off and some who still have jobs are meeting up at a bar in Dallas, and while Dan's refrained from drowning his sorrows thus far, I think tonight will be the night to get blitzed.

Easter is this weekend, too. Dan was supposed to work on Easter, but now it looks like we'll have the day together. I'm just hoping it will be quiet. It was exceedingly awkward spending Tuesday night with Dan's family. There'd been plans for about a week for the family to go out to dinner that night, since his sister was home, and I'd initially declined because I planned to go out and ride. After everything that happened, though, I couldn't say I had to pass on seeing Dan, so I went out there. I'm not sure I'm up for doing that whole awkward thing again on Sunday.

In the mean time, I'm just bracing myself for a frustrating next few months. My life is still fine; I still have a job, I don't think I'm in danger of losing it, but I expect it will be difficult to be the only working journalist in what has always been a relationship between two working journalists.

I did tell Dan that if he went into PR, though, I'd do it. That way we can both be sell-outs.

Unemployed

This morning Dan got laid off by the Dallas Morning News.

We both knew today would be cuts, but we both thought he'd be safe. He is (was, I guess) a mobile journalist, doing photos, video and stories for the web and the paper, and he makes about half of what a lot of other reporters make.

But he got laid off, along with many, many other reporters, photographers and web people. He was the last person hired, so that may have been a red flag, but not a single editor got laid off. Not a single one, and yet those who generate content were axed.

Obviously, I've been on an emotional roller coaster today, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect my job today. I was having a hard time concentrating, I was forgetting things, I just didn't give a shit. I can only imagine Dan had it worse than me. I know we have it a lot better than a lot of those who lost their jobs--those who are married and have mortgages and kids or whatnot. There's enough freelance work out there to give him something to do, and he's already sending out his resume and pulling together clips, but this is going to be a huge, shocking transition. It's going to take a while for him to settle into the reality of this, I think, and it's going to take me a while to process it as well.

With the DMN making irrational business decisions and the Star-Telegram pulling shit like this in some misguided attempt to keep afloat, I can only say that I have utterly and completely lost my faith in the newspaper industry.

And as a reporter, that's a fucking awful feeling.

Look At The Momentum Here

I'd just like to point out it's been a week and I'm posting again. This is a good sign, right? Yeah? Like a consumer confidence index, hopefully this points toward more frequent posts in the future. We'll see.

Last night my sister told me she wanted to buy a bike and she wanted my opinion and I crushed her little romantic dreams of merrily pedaling through Fort Worth with a basket of flowers above her fender. I know this bike mechanic who calls them "circus bear bikes," because your posture is very upright and almost silly looking. I told her this. And then I suddenly realized that after years and years of hanging out with Dan and his bikes, I'd become elitist.

Tonight I have to convince myself to go out to the barn. I haven't been out since last Saturday--it's bad. I've been really on top of it, taking care of Topper and the Pony, but lately I'm just tired. I'm tired of driving out there, dealing with all this damn hair as they shed, tacking and riding both of them and driving home hungry and tired and dirty at 8:30 p.m. after having been at work all day. It's a bit of a burnout, I guess. (I'm having a lot of tired/lazy/blah problems, aren't I?)

I didn't go out on Tuesday like I usually do--I went for a long run at the Clear Forks Park and got a new library card and spent the evening reading instead. It was nice. And I know I'll be fine at the barn once I get there. I'm always happy once I get there. It's just the thought of everything that's daunting. Plus, I've got to get out today to drop the check for board for April.

Tomorrow is payday. All I really want to do is buy pots and pans. I signed my 60-day notice with the apartment complex yesterday (and had to deal with the front office people ask me to stay: "Are you sure you don't want to move into a one bedroom?" Fuck that shit, man.), and so I keep thinking of my own place. Is it strange that I'm 26 and have never lived in my own place? I don't know. My mother called me the other day and asked if I reconsidered staying with my sister, and I almost told my mother to "fuck that" but I didn't. I just said no way, no how. I tell my mom my sister is loud and rude and dirty and a bitch, and evidently my sister says the same things about me. But I'm not leaving every single effing thing in the kitchen dirty in the sink for a week after cooking elaborate meals with my boyfriend at midnight. That's probably why I'm so obsessed with my own kitchen stuff.

Yesterday I bought a few kitchen knives and it felt so good.

Twits Of A Twit

Ok, I've fiddled for a bit and had to update my template. . . but anyway, I did join Twitter in another attempt to fill my life with uselessness.

You can join me as we waste seconds that all add up to hours of our lives frittered away.

(Frittered? Is that right? Like frittering? Whatever.)

Crap

It's been almost a month since I last updated. Can you believe that? That means I suck at blogging lately, that's what it means. My other blog has completely fallen by the wayside too, which is sad, but I'll hopefully get it back on track at some point. I need to start small, though, so I'm going to see if I can get back into this one with some reliability.

First of all, Topper is not completely crippled. I know I left that last post on a bad note, but I was just so worked up about the whole thing that I had to vent somewhere. (Besides venting to Dan, who was probably kind of confused about what to do, dealing with me crying and worrying about my horse.) Topper has splints, which are microfractures, in each of his back legs, which is what causes the bumps and swelling around the bone. The vet (let me just go ahead and make it public: I have a little crush on our equine vet, and part of it is probably that he thinks Topper is awesome) came out and got both Rio and Topper updated on shots and said I should give Topper about six weeks off, only walking.

Since then, Topper and I have gone out once or twice a week for a ride that involves just walking. Not terribly exciting, but sometimes it's nice to have no pressure for him to behave and to have a good workout. We walk around, spent a half hour relaxing, and it helps him from climbing up the walls the way he has on previous DL stints. Then I take him in and tack the pony and take him out for a long, good ride, which is gratifying--Rio is fun and a little bit challenging without being frustrating. The only reason he's challenging is because he hasn't been worked a lot for years, and I haven't riden him with any frequency in years, but we have fun and we're jumping and that makes me happy. I can see a physical difference in him: He's not overweight anymore, he's building muscle and stamina, he's remembering things like how to do his lines and pick up leads after jumps.

Again, I've been thinking about why I haven't been blogging lately and I'm not sure I have a good reason. Obviously, things are busy. Monday is my quiet day--I go to work, work out or go running, do grocery shopping and spend the evening watching TV. (Hello, new Gossip Girl episodes!) Tuesday and Thursday I do work, go running, go to the barn, ride both the horses and don't get home until about 9 p.m. Wednesday I drive to Dallas to spend the evening with Dan after work and then have to drive back to Fort Worth. Friday usually involves the barn or driving to Dallas, and weekends are filled with horses and friends.

That's not a complete excuse, though. Even at work, things have been incredibly busy. It's no secret I've blogged at work during the day--a lot of my job is waiting, waiting on PR people to call me back, waiting on interviews, waiting on all sorts of things, so I would fill it in with blogging (along with reading blogs, reading news, researching obscure topics, etc etc).

The other thing was I've been in a general funk for a while now. I don't know why, and it's not a huge funk or anything, it's just something has felt off and I think it's just a reaction to stress. There are some personal things that have been getting me worked up lately, and thankfully the anchors in my life have been steady (like Dan and my parents). If I had problems in those realms, I'd be screwed.

So. Hm. I'm sure no one's really that interested in all this ruminating bullshit, but I figured I'd go ahead and throw it out there before I attempt to do some normal posts again. I don't know if I'll get the chance to blog again before Friday or so, but we have an after-work event on Thursday and so maybe there will be some tipsy blogging after some free drinks. We all know I'm pretty much a light-weight.

Counting Days

I realize it's been a while since I updated. I fell into a sort of blog slump. It came from various things, including a new workout schedule, being busier at work, and just a general "eh" feeling when it comes to writing. Well, I take that back--I've been writing, but not here. All I can say is that I suddenly decided I could write short stories since I've been reading dozens and dozens of them lately. They're a new obsession. Two days ago I finally set down the anthologies and picked up a normal novel for the first time since some time in January. It's a fairly crazy idea of mine, but what the hell, it's writing, it amuses me, why not, right?

Anyway. Today is essentially my Friday, since tomorrow is one of my unpaid personal days to save the company money and hopefully save my job. Every week should be four days, I've decided. This is no huge epiphany--I've said this over and over, but I continue to stand by it. It's good to have convictions.

Also, I've been anticipating tomorrow all week--not just because it's a day off, but also because the equine vet is coming out to the barn to check on Topper's legs. This is a huge thing for me. I had a mini breakdown over the weekend about this. Topper's accident-prone: About five years ago he put a hole through the major tendon in one of his front legs, and he couldn't go out for a ride or be turned out or anything for a whole year. He was only allowed to walk. He finally healed, and scar tissue filled in the hole, and I rehabbed him with slow work over the course of months, and he was fine again. Then about three years ago he somehow tore a ligament in a back leg, up in his hips, and he went through a treatment where the vet irritated the area with these injections to cause scar tissue to grow and connect everything back together again. It worked, and I rehabbed him again, but he hasn't really been able to jump since then.

Two months ago he got this mysterious lump halfway down his lower leg on the right side. There was no heat, no pain, and he was never lame, so I just kept an eye on it but kept riding. About three weeks ago he developed a similar lump on the left side, and now he's off. He doesn't want to work when I ride him, so we only walk around, and he just looks lame. I've waited for it to heal, but he's still off, so now the vet comes in.

The reason I'm so freaked out is I'm afraid this is finally the injury that will retire him and he won't be allowed to do anything but walk ever again. Or he can't do anything and has to be on stall rest for a year. He's miserable on stall rest. We had to drug him the first time around because he got so wound up in his stall. He was bred to be a race horse, he loves to go out for rides and work and jump, and when he can't, I just feel sorry for him. There's an awful lot of feeling sorry for myself, too--what if I can't really ride my horse anymore? I love jumping, and I miss it so much, and to lose riding altogether? Real riding, not just walking? Terrible.

The good thing is I can ride the pony, since he's back up to riding condition, and he's good and fun to ride and loves to jump as much as Topper. For a while, if Topper has to be off a bit, I have someone to ride. I know I'm also jumping ahead to worse-case scenarios (that's what I do). Maybe Topper just needs some time off or something simple. I am so wound up and nervous about this that I become nauseated when I think about it too much.

Other days I'm anticipating--next Sunday, a little over a week from now, daylight savings will dictate we move clocks forward an hour and gain an hour of evening sunlight. I'm so excited! That means I won't have to worry about getting out of work as soon as possible to get to the barn while it's still light outside. Whew. I love evenings, and I'd much rather deal with dark mornings than dark nights.

In journalism news, the Pentagon lifted its ban on photographing coffins of military members. Photos are ok, but only with the family's permission. I'd like to say congrats to the military for doing this. It's about time. These military personnel fought and died, in part, for the freedom of the press, so I think it's only right there should be access. I think there should be full access, but you have to take what you're given. Positive reinforcement! But this will let others recognize and honor those who died through the media, and that's a huge thing.

I'm sure tomorrow I'll update with what the vet says. If I can get going with blogging consistently for a few days, both here and on the Dork Reporter, then hopefully I'll be out of this blogging-block.

I Know How Old I Am

Over the weekend we decided to waste some time at a really swank liquor store, complete with a fake French village inside it where the wine section is, and I bought myself a bottle of one of my favorite sparkling white wines to put away for my birthday, which is in another month.

When my birthday rolls around, I will be 26, which is putting me dangerously close to late-20s. I think the late-whatevers probably start at the sevens; 27, 37, 47, whatever. The thing is, I know I'm still pretty young, especially when it comes to being in the work world.

I got an e-mail from Emily the other day talking about some woman who made a snide comment about how young Emily is. Emily's about my age, and I really sympathized with her. With work stuff, I often get people saying "This was probably before you were born" or "You probably won't remember." I usually don't have a problem with it, since it often IS before I was born, and I do my research so that even if I don't remember something, I probably know of it.

What's irritating is the few individuals who think that just because you're young, you're silly or stupid. Most of our reporting staff is under 30, and we're all covering fairly wide areas that are complex and require some work. Obviously, we know we're young, and we probably all act a little older than our age at times, just to make up for the fact that it's obvious we don't have decades of experience. Whenever I come across really condescending people, I try to throw out the fact that I went to grad school or something like that, just so they get the idea that yeah, I'm young, but I'm not a complete idiot.

(I think I've probably ranted about this before in one way or another. If it's all sounding familiar, I apologize. I just do a lot of ranting here and can't remember it all.)

Plus, even people who've been around for a while make blatant work mistakes. I worked with a PR person just recently and I repeatedly told her we go to press on Thursday. On Wednesday I called to do a fact check, and she gave me a stat and then told me she'd have to check herself on that but she was fairly certain it was the right number. On Thursday, hadn't heard from her, so I assumed the stat was correct and we put it in a fact box and went to press. On Friday she got back to me by e-mail saying the stat was wrong and giving me the correct one. I had to write her back and tell her that we'd already gone to press with the wrong stat, and her e-mail said "Bummer. Sorry about that."

Yeah, I bet you're really sorry that we're having to run a correction because of your mistake. I wish there were a way to write a correction and explain how the mistake happened.

Close To The End

So I think, after a series of mini-meltdowns this week that occurred while I was driving in my car and never ended in tears but did get me close and also almost made me swerve into a huge pickup truck, that I'm getting close to the end of my despair over journalism. (That sentence was entirely too long.)

This does not mean that I have some great, profitable career lined up, like being a bankruptcy lawyer, or that my job is secure. No, it merely means that I am closing in on overload and so won't be able to process any more bad news. It will then just go in one ear and out the other and hopefully I won't think any more than, Well, that's a fucking shame, and move on. (Unless I get laid off. I just don't see how I couldn't NOT freak out over something like that.)

What finally got me to the edge? It was probably the news today that the Star-Telegram is going to lay off everyone it's ever employed and also their mothers and not let their kids run lemonade stands on the corners any more. Fifty cents for lemonade? Are you effing kidding me?! It turns out the rumors and rumblings Andrew heard were right.

I know, it's not my paper anymore, but it's more the principle of the thing. The industry is just slowly collapsing, like a flan in a cupboard, as Eddie Izzard would say. I'm taking off tomorrow afternoon as part of the whole five-unpaid-personal-days-to-save-money, and yes, I do expect to be drinking. And getting an oil change. I can't afford to pay for serious car repairs because I was negligant.

Rumor-Mongering

Word on the street is five editorial people at the Star-Telegram have to be gone by Monday, and Belo announced that 500 people from the company will be cut by the end of February (that's roughly one in seven people getting cut from its newspapers too, which includes the Dallas Morning News).

Fuck!

I'm looking at my resume and wondering if there's till time to get into some kind of teaching program, where I can yell at thuggish high schoolers all day to SHUT UP and SIT DOWN and wonder why they don't care about the finer things in life, like naming the cell organs and reading The Sun Also Rises.

I think either tonight or tomorrow night will turn into another mournful, bitchy, whiny night of journalism drinking. I felt better about my paper after having too much crappy beer to drink last Saturday night (no hangover! it's a miracle! I believe it's the multivitamins I took before I went to bed, because a girl's got to believe in something, right?), and so I'm thinking maybe Dan and Andrew will feel better after some drinking and late-night Whataburger. Andrew, from what I gather, essentially had his regular job disappear from under him and will only be able to freelance now, so it's a good thing he's in graduate school, and Dan's nervous about what's to come.

I've talked a lot about changing careers, going into medicine, but those were always long-term plans, something to slowly work on and get ready for over the course of maybe four or five years. I cannot wrap my head around the idea of how quickly all the papers around here are falling to bits and I might end up getting fucked too. I'm not mentally prepared to do anything else; I don't want to do anything else at this point. I like being a journalist, I like the self-righteousness that comes with it and the superior feeling of always knowing something other people don't.

Thankfully I've been writing, usually in the evenings, so hopefully I can finish things up there within the year. Maybe I can get a book published and then become a hospital janitor or something.

I'm so glad it's Friday at 4:39 p.m. I'm also glad I have a stockpile of Shiner 99 in the back of my closet, just in case of a nuclear attack or an industry breakdown.

Ice Day

Yesterday I went to the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo (this is where you yell, Yee-haw! and then continue reading this post) to do some reporting for a story about whether the event is being impacted by the economy. This is the same event that started my journalism career in Fort Worth, two years ago, and I got these nice memories of eating funnel cakes for lunch and smelling like cows all day when I walked through the grounds.

When I was finished with my reporting, I noticed I had a text message from my ME telling me to go home, since there was an ice storm headed for North Texas. I left the Stock Show, drove out to the barn to check on the horses and make sure they were in their blankets and would stay inside all night, then picked up some movies and spent the night on the couch, watching movies.

I could hear the freezing rain coming down as I fell asleep last night, and this morning Fenway woke me up around 5:20 and after I fed him some food to shut him up I looked out the window. Behold! Ice! Everywhere! I didn't have an interview until 11, so I woke up again at 8:30, called to change the interview from in-person to on-the-phone due to the icy streets, and went back to bed. My ME sent out a message saying we were free to work from home, but all my notes were on my computer at work so I ended up being there for the afternoon.

Usually on Wednesday nights I drive out to Dallas to see Dan (or, more importantly, to see Top Chef or Project Runway, since I don't get Bravo at my place), but no way in hell I'm doing that today. It warmed up to about 40 this afternoon, and a lot of ice melted, but all the slush and puddles are just going to refreeze tonight. If I went to Dallas, I'd be driving back in ice again, and I'm not dealing with that. It's a nerve-wracking drive in bad conditions.

Since I wasn't driving to Dallas, I ended up going to this massive (and seriously, I mean massive) antique mall to look for tables/chairs for a new apartment and instead bought a really heavy brass piggy bank from Chicago. It's beautiful, looks like a real pig, heavy and solid and it was a total impulse buy, I'm not afraid to admit. Since I felt a bit bad about paying $40 for a piggy bank, I went to Central Market and spent more money on apples and clementines.

Dinner today was a giant apple, a half pound of edamame (hey, it was all shells), two clementines, and I'm going to have a slice of cake. They somehow even each other out.

Tomorrow after work I have to go to this grand opening/rededication sort of thing that includes drinks and desserts. It's not really for a story or anything at the moment; it's more of a mingling thing, and I feel decidedly awkward mingling. I do it; I walk over to strangers, introduce myself, strike up conversation, collect some business cards, but I have to force it. I may have talked about this before, but Dan and I have a theory that most journalists really hate talking to people. Way down, in the recesses of your journalist's soul, it just feels wrong. A lot of us get into this because we like hearing other people talk, we like being the one to record histories, we like collecting data. We just hate having to do that back-and-forth that normal society likes.

But if they're serving alcohol, I can have a glass or two of wine or a few beers (I hate that I'm usually the only woman who drinks beer at these events; why do women always drink wine, even if it's bland?) and the mingling will become a bit more easy.

I just watched a baby hippo get eaten by a crocodile. That's what I get for putting on Animal Planet. This effing channel. I'm going to fiddle with the channel and find that cake to revive me.

No Comment

I'm not going to discuss how the blog proposal went, but instead I'm just going to say this:

I have launched a new science blog, and I encourage everyone to check it out. I am not a scientist, I dropped out of my college chemistry class, I changed my major from neuroscience to journalism approximately six weeks into my college career, but it's still something I love and am constantly awed by and therefore I want to write about it. Even if you're not a science person, try it anyway. Hopefully it will appeal to you, too.

The Dork Reporter

Va-cay

Today at work we all found ourselves with five unpaid personal days that have to be taken by April 30.

Holla atcha three-day weekends!

I guess it's a good thing if it means not laying people off. On the other hand, it's sort of a pain, since it's unpaid, but I guess it would completely defeat the point if they just gave us another five days off. Less productivity, being paid the same, the company doesn't gain anything.

The first thing I thought when I heard this was, Dude, I can sleep in and ride Topper in the daylight on a week day. Sweet! Then I thought that I should take off my birthday, which is on a Wednesday this year. (My birthday was so much better when I was in school, when it was always during spring break.) Not only is it on a Wednesday, which is usually spent frantically trying to track down the fuckers who won't call me back, but it's for a health care focused issue, so I can't take off the whole day because it's an issue where I'm kind of necessary.

So I took off that afternoon, and hopefully this will motivate me to get my shit in line and work ahead. I already have one of the stories for that week, and I can do it at any point, and hopefully I can nail another two like that.

This week was a shitstorm when it came to people calling me back. I wrote two stories where I only got one real source and had to pull from studies and press releases to round them out. It was stupid. One of them was this story I was really enthusiastic about, one that I believed in, and one I actually worked on for two weeks. Unfortunately, one company had a national meeting one week and then everyone was catching up on work the next, so they didn't get back to me. Another company (thankfully) got back to me with nice, complete answers. The third company has a media guy who won't even return my phone calls or e-mails. I must have left him at least a half dozen voice mails, and in one I even asked him to please let me know if the company just didn't want to participate and I wouldn't leave him any more messages, but NOTHING. The guy sucks at life, and I can't tell him.

Sometimes I hate trying to be objective.

One thing that did make me feel better today, while I was stressed out and had high blood pressure, was listening to the White Stripes that I had on my iPod while driving to yet another interview in Arlington. My favorite song is "Ball and Biscuit," which is this brilliant (long) blues song with kind of nutty lyrics and this loud screeching guitar. Love the screech. It's from their 2003 album Elephant, and there's something intensely gratifying to me about loud guitars. Dan doesn't really get it, I don't think. He probably thinks it's just noise, and more than once I've picked him up and he immediately turns down my car radio.

Tomorrow at story meeting I'm giving a sort of presentation about blogs and what they could do for our paper. I got this task because I'm persistently asking to have a science and health care blog, and it's something I mentioned in my job interview almost two years ago. (Almost two years. I've now been at the paper as long as I was in grad school. Craziness.) I think it's the best thing for us, and I think all the reporters are enthusiastic. Cross your fingers I can convince the editors and administration, too.

Tomorrow is also Friday, and I plan on getting pretty intoxicated. It's been that kind of week.

Stray

This morning I had an interview out in Arlington, and I was driving along I-30 on my way back when I saw this large, white dog trotting alongisde the highway, limping just slightly, but going steadily with his tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.

The dog was on the left side of the freeway, in this sort of grassy median that turned to a really wide asphalt shoulder a few miles up. I looked at the dog as I went past at 70 miles per hour, and I briefly considered pulling my car over the trying to pick him up. Where was he going to go? How was he going to cross three lanes of traffic to get off the freeway? I didn't notice a collar, but I was going pretty fast. Maybe he belonged to someone. Maybe he didn't. Maybe I should have done something.

I have really, really intense guilt when it comes to stray dogs, and especially dogs who seem in a situation where no one is going to help them and they're going to get killed by being hit by a car. Cats are something else--I think of cats as more able to take care of themselves, and when I find a small stray kitten (like the little one on the exit ramp near University, or the one that lived in the bush near Dan's apartment), I can easily pull over, catch it and put it in my cat to take it to a shelter.

It's not the same with dogs. I have a small two-door, and a dog would be in awfully close quarters with me while I'm driving. What if it starts pacing around or climbing over seats? And what if while I'm trying to entice the dog over it turns out to be a mean dog that tries to attack me?

But what if it's a nice, gentle, hungry, dehydrated dog that needs help and I just drove past?

I thought about that dog the whole rest of the drive back. Obviously, I'm still thinking about him. I'm wondering if someone picked him up. Maybe they took him home. (I certainly couldn't bring home a dog, with two roommates, two cats and an apartment. It's just not sane.) Maybe he crossed the highway--at least he's got his bright color going for him--and headed off to a subdivision.

When I drive by and don't stop, it makes it awfully hard for me to believe I'm a good person.

Um . . .

I haven't posted in about 10 days, which seems like a long time to me, but only because I'm lame like that. I don't have anything big and huge to say, just some random points to make . . . but even when I try to be coherent in a post, it digresses into a mess anyway, so now I'm going to shut up.

First of all, I know everyone wants to know about personal drama, and I know the people I talk to on a regular basis (or who are unfortunately enough to see me every day or so) have already heard, but I am definitely moving out of my apartment by the end of May. I've been living with my sister for the past two years, since I moved back from Boston. First I moved in because it was convenient, then I stayed because it's cheap, and now I'm moving because I like my sister and need to remember than instead of being reminded of all the stupid things that we do that annoy each other. Our third roommate will be done with her graduate degree in May, so she'll be moving back down to Austin, and it just makes more sense for me to move out then.

Secondly, Dan started on a new shift at the paper, so now he's working from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. and holy cow, it's like being around my parents when we're together! (I love my parents, by the way.) He gets all tired and sleepy around 9 p.m., and is pretty much in bed and asleep by 9:30 most nights. We used to call and wish each other good night when we were going to bed, and now I can't because he calls me when I'm watching Anthony Bourdain or something and if I try to call he's been unconscious for two hours already. The up side is he has afternoons to spend out on his bike, and that makes him happier, so I guess it all works out.

Third, I have discovered the joys of eating seafood at home. I don't cook a lot--most nights I'm not home until around 8, and by then I'm too hungry to wait on something that takes longer to make than a grilled cheese sandwich or something. Additionally, I share a fridge with two other people, and there's only so much room to keep things, and occasionally things get shoved behind something else and lost and then spoil and have to be tossed and I think, "Fuck, that's $6 worth of cheese" or something like that. So anyway: The other night I really, really wanted to eat crab, and when I went grocery shopping I realized I was a dumbass and I could buy crab (or salmon, or swordfish, or scallops, whatever) at the store. Seafood is really quick to make, and now I'm eating seafood once a week--the day I go grocery shopping. I'm afraid if I buy two meals' worth, then one serving will get shoved behind something else and lost and spoil and smell so bad well have to throw the whole fridge out.

Fourth, I was reminded yet again this week that checking quotes with people can be a royal pain in the ass. (Oh yeah, you didn't think you were getting through an entire post without a journalist's gripe of some sort, did you?)

We have this feature sometimes that's a Q&A, and you talk to someone on the phone, type everything they say out verbatim, then edit it down for size/clarity . . . it uses what I refer to as "creative punctuation" to make sense of the way people talk. Few people talk in clear, cut-and-dry sentences, and so there are lots of ellipses, commas, dashes, etc, and people come out sounding fine.

This woman, who admitted on the phone to being a perfectionist, said she wanted to see the quotes prior to press. Since the whole thing was basically one giant direct quote, I had to e-mail it to her, and then she called me and said she sounded dumb and she didn't want her name affiliated with it. She said some parts didn't even make sense and maybe she does talk like that, but that's not the image she wants to convey.

I met with my editor and we reluctantly let her type answers to the questions instead. It was just more trouble than it was worth, and the answers she typed back were generic, boring, and really not as interesting as what she'd said. This is the whole reason journalists talk to people--you want to get that human feeling, that funny turn of phrase that sums things up so well. I think most people, if they saw a transcript of a conversation they participated in, would say, "Shit, I sound dumb." I'm sure I would. I sound ridiculous sometimes. But I know that, and I can turn on my professional-speak where I at least sound literate. I am guessing this woman turned on her professional-speak, and she sounded fine. But what can you do.

Oh wait, I know what I could do:
I could post a complaint on Angry Journalist. Or I could just be lazy and complain here.

Another good website, although this one looks like it's fairly new, but I'm optimistic:
Overheard in the Newsroom

And lastly, I am in the process of brain storming with my fellow reporters and looking for a way to incorporate a blog into our paper. We need a blog, right? Everyone needs a blog. I know people who have blogs for their cats. Clearly, we can do better than that.

Bad Attitude

Yesterday I was working on this story, and I called up a PR woman who works for a firm in Dallas that helped me track down people in this big company before. I wasn't sure whether she was the right person to talk to, but she'd been ultra-helpful and nice in the past, so I figured she'd be a good place to start.

She told me she'd have someone from inside the company get back to me, and sure enough I got an e-mail later that afternoon that had some general statements about the company. I wrote back and said, Hey, thanks, here are some more questions, my deadline isn't until Wednesday, so no big rush on anything.

I then got another reply from this guy within the company, and he was pretty snotty. He was telling me that they don't track those numbers, he doesn't have that information, he can't find that, it would take too much time and effort and his staff isn't big enough and waah waah waah. It really annoyed me. First of all, I KNOW there's got to be records of this stuff. This is fairly important financial stuff we're talking about, and this is a really big company, so you know they're tracking everything. (I'm not going to name the company, but let's just say it's a Big Company. Trust me on this one.) I know you've probably got a small staff and everything--fuck, there's five of us reporters churning out tens of thousands of words every week to fill a whole newspaper--but come on. Seriously. At least say, Hey, we'll try and get you what we can. Don't just blow me off. You saying you don't have the staff or time means "I'm lazy and don't want to waste my time with you."

Jerk. I hate snippy PR people.

Sunday night the weather took a turn for the winterish, and it got really cold and then start drizzling and freezing everywhere. I was inside on my couch, but my back started really hurting. Well, ok, not exactly my back. It was my pelvis, that huge giant bone, the one that felt like I'd cracked it into pieces a little over a year ago when Topper threw me like nobody's business. In fact, yesterday that bone felt almost the exact same way it did when I got thrown, when I had to go to an urgent care center and get it x-rayed to make sure there weren't pieces floating around in there.

The doctor then gave me a prescription for tramadol, which never really did anything at the time, so I generally didn't take them. Last night I took some on the off chance it would help, and sat on a heating pad all night (which helped with the other problem, which that it was really cold in the apartment). I went to bed around 11:30, really tired, finished reading a Texas Monthly article and turned out the lights at midnight. I felt exhausted, but then proceeded to lay in bed until 1:30, unable to fall asleep. Then, my sister and her boyfriend came home.

If I had to pinpoint one thing as the most stressful thing in my life, it would be my sister's work schedule. I know I gripe and whine about a lot of things on here, and I don't talk about my sister as much as say, oh, PR people, but it's because she's family and I want to kind of be respectful of her. But seriously: cannot take it. She works as a waitress and closes most nights, so she comes in around 1:30, 2, sometimes even 4 if she goes out somewhere afterward, and I always, always hear her come in.

I've become a really light sleeper. I don't know when it happened--the time some creepy guy snuck into my dorm room while I was asleep and hovered over my bed, causing me to wake up and have to file a police report? The time I got Fenway and he discovered the most comfortable place to sleep at night is on my face? The time my sister started coming home at ungodly hours and then sitting up and talking or whatever with her boyfriend until like 5 a.m.? I don't know.

But I do know I always hear her come in, and then I always hear her and her boyfriend and it drives me nuts. I've asked her repeatedly to lower her voice, shut her door, keep it down, get a real job, whatever, but it just doesn't work. Last night, Fenway was loud and obnoxious, I couldn't sleep (possibly the tramadol? I have weird reactions to some painkillers), and I could hear her. I laid in bed until 2:30, my heart rate progressively climbing from "oh, we're awake" to "we're doing jumping jacks" to "we're running a marathon and our head might explode." I started trembling because I was just so angry, so frustrated.

Then it was my turn to turn bitchy. I heard my sister and I sprang out of bed, whipped open my door, and stood in the hallway yelling something to the effect of, "Seriously, it's 2:30 in the morning! We only overlap in this apartment like 6 hours a day, and it's when I need to sleep!"

My sister said they'd been whispering and her door was shut, but that just proves that A) I have supersonic hearing or B) she's still loud. I'm opting for B. She has NO idea how loud she is.

But let me tell you, I felt a helluva lot better after yelling at them. I fell asleep with no problem after that.

Aaaaaannd Done

I'd just like to take a moment to gloat about the fact that I (generally) stuck to my 2008 resolution to take up running. Exactly a year ago today, I went out running for the first time since I had moved back from Boston (so there was a year off there, a year spent drinking a lot of beer), and ended up so sore it hurt to walk up the stairs at work on the 2nd.

I took some time off when I got sick, and switched to running stairs in the summer, because I am psychologically ill and clearly in need of help, but all in all, I'm pretty proud of myself.

I'm also feeling generally ok about 2008. Yeah, it was a shit year with the economy and all, and I haven't hit the jackpot despite the fact I buy $1 lottery tickets like three times a year, but for me it was pretty good. And even though my immune system finally cracked under the pressure of the holidays and being surrounded by sick people, I had a good time at the New Year's party Dan, Loren and I went to out in Dallas. I didn't feel it was prudent to drink with a cold and had volunteered as the designated driver, so I only had some Jello shots (those totally don't count) and a glass of champagne (again, doesn't count). It was a great house to have a party in, there was a bartender (!) that had been hired for the event (this classifies as really swanky in my book), and a great mix of dance music from the computer, just right to use the giant hardwood floor in front of a lit fireplace. For everyone who witnessed my dancing: I'm sorry. I'm just glad you were drunk.

So seeing as how I did fairly well with resolutions in 2008, I'm hoping I can do it again this year. I'm going to stick with the running still, and then my new task for the year is to do some serious work on The Novel. Last year was all fine and dandy, but the economy IS sinking fast and I don't have the money to enroll in school again, so I'm going to need to invest some time and effort into something else that has a remote possibility of offering some cash in the future. (I'm talking really remote here. I've spent many years researching and agonizing over how hard it is to get a novel published. But I also know that the sooner I get it out of my system and probably get the big rejections, then I'll be more productive as a journalist, knowing that I don't have any other options at the moment.)

And since this first day of the new year is almost done with already, I feel like I should probably go pound out 100 words or so, just to get some momentum building here. Maybe tomorrow my writing muscles will be so sore that I won't be able to get anything done at work, which would be a real shame, because seriously--how on earth am I supposed to fill eight (ok, like six, after you count showing up late and a long lunch) hours at work on the Friday after New Year's?

Broke

I'm all done with my Christmas break, which I guess I would classify as being successful. My flight to DC was only delayed 45 minutes, a miracle when people were spending days on the floors of airports as snow and ice whipped through most of the country, and I spent a lot of time reading, including finishing the damn D.H. Lawrence book I started and then had to finish because I'd gotten too far to just walk away. Everything was peaceful until Dec. 23, when my sister came home and generally caused a lot of angst, and then I got back to DFW without any flight delays and without getting charged for extra weight on my suitcase. So glad that ticket clerk was too busy with another passenger to pay attention to the scale!

I like breaks. They're gratifying. Sure, vacation is nice, but sometimes I just want time off where I don't really do a lot and most of my time is spent on a couch. That's a good break. Traveling to new places or cities often requires stress, the stress of being someplace new, of anxiety, the stress of being excited and overextending yourself, doing more in three or four days than most people do in an entire month. A break just requires showing up, that's all.

I did so some things--I went in to school with my mother, who's an elementary school music teacher, the day after I arrived and made photocopies for her and helped tidy up her classroom in preparation for winter break. I briefly went into work with my father, who will be retiring from the Air Force soon, and met all of the people he works with and had to really, really keep ahold of my curiosity since he works in an office where they put classified documents in paper sacks to be destroyed and then write "SECRET" on them. Seriously, so tempting. I saw Liz and Pat, who I saw briefly in San Francisco during their wedding weekend but was able to spend more time with in DC, where they actually live, and get cupcakes at the same time. I went to the Newseum, which I'll get into on a later post, and indulged myself in some journalistic dorkiness. I got to sift through a bunch of boxes of my childhood stuff in my parents' basement, setting aside stuffed animals and books to be donated and throwing away all my CD cases, now that they're all loaded on my computer and the discs are in a giant book. Remember buying a new CD and how difficult they were to open, with all the little stickers, and then flipping through the booklet to see lyrics or photos or credits and shout-outs to mothers and others who helped the band in some way?

I've also gotten over my shame for this one, but I read the first book in the Twilight series. My mother had read the first two, and she said they were entertaining enough, so I found a copy at the secondhand book store and read it. It was entertaining. It was like candy. It's good for a short while, and then you feel the need to have something with more substance. I have the second one in my suitcase to read soon . . . that's why my luggage is always so close to the weight limit (or over) when I fly home. I fill half of my big suitcase with books, take them home and switch them out with other books, since most of mine are still with my parents. Then I fly home with switched-out books plus all the books I've bought. If real paper-and-stiching books weren't so gratifying, I'd totally get onto the whole e-book thing just for portability.

I flew back on Saturday night and then had to go to a surprise party thing for one of Dan's brothers, who's getting deployed to Iraq in February. It was fairly awkward, and then last night I saw his family again because they were having a late birthday celebration for Dan, whose real birthday was on the day of the surprise party (and therefore generally ignored). That was also fairly awkward. I find myself thinking that even one day when I'm married, I may still want to spend breaks on my parents' couch, reading books and watching reruns.